An Evening with George R. R. Martin and Publisher Tom Doherty at the Brown University Library

good evening I'm Harriet Hamas a university librarian at Brown and tonight's program is brought to you by the Brown University Library and the Friends of the library before we begin tonight's interview and I know you're already bored I have the honor of presenting to each of our special guests Tom Doherty and george RR martin the harris collection literary award the idea for this award originated with the friends of the library this year and was inspired by the library's harris collection of american poetry and plays this world-class collection established by Caleb Fiske Harris Brown class of 1838 celebrates the influence of literature in popular culture could there be better first-time recipients of this award Tom Doherty is a respected leader in the field of publishing who founded his own company in 1980 and published among other things tor books now a subsidiary of Macmillan publishers tour has won the locus magazine poll for best science fiction publisher since 1988 and is described as the most successful science fiction and fantasy publisher in the world george RR martin is the number one New York Times bestseller author of many novels including the acclaimed series a Song of Ice and Fire on which the HBO program Game of Thrones is based as a writer producer he has worked on The Twilight Zone Beauty and the Beast and just a little on the game of Thrones Tom and George have enjoyed a long history of collaboration which I'm sure will learn tonight but first the awards [Applause] Oh Tony welcome thank you very much it's nice coming to an award ceremony where I know I'm gonna win very tired of losing Emmys every year now I have a little housekeeping to take care of you have your tickets in hand I hope and these tickets have a special meaning not only because they allowed you entrance to tonight's program but because they will also give you access to a book dangerous William women Volume one that is compliments of tor books and Tom so thank you very much I think this is the best kind of housekeeping in order for you to claim your book please come to the ROC to the administrative offices Monday through Friday 9:00 to 5:00 p.m. and beginning tomorrow tonight's interview at last will be conducted by Professor Lynn joy rich and author John land who have joined us on stage professor joy rich teaches courses on cultural criticism film studies and television studies in the department of modern culture and media at Brown she is the author of reviewing reception television gender and postmodern culture and co-author co-editor excuse-me of the journal camara obscura Lynne has also written a number of articles and chapters including a recent work that discusses the program Game of Thrones this document will be included in a forthcoming second edition of new media old media a history and theory reader Providence residents John land graduated from Brown in 1979 magna laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English and American literature he is the USA Today bestselling author of 36 novels including the award-winning Caitlyn strong series the most recent injury of which is strong darkness John is also a very active friends of the library member and was instrumental in helping put together tonight's program please join me in welcoming our guest and our interviewers [Applause] it's always nice to start at the beginning and I need to test just as a small intro very quick I was not introduced obviously to George our Martin with a song of Fire and Ice I've met him as an author for the first time in a pair of books he did in the 80s one was a book called fever dream one of the best vampire novels I've ever read about vampires and the Mississippi River before anybody else was writing vampire books before Stephen King and this one this is the original first edition you can see this is a book I've read four or five times there are many that I that I count like that it's a rock and roll horror story that to me it's one of the books that made me want to be a writer honestly that's how well-written it is you need to take better care your book [Laughter] speaking of the beginning there's a quote that you gave in 2014 the first scene chapter 1 of the first book the chapter where they find the dire wolf pups just came to be out of nowhere I wasn't working a different novel and suddenly I saw that scene it didn't belong the novel I was writing but it came to me so vividly they had and sit down and write it and by the time I did it led to a second chapter and the second chapter was the Catelyn chapter where Ned had just come back was this series that be got the the TV series Game of Thrones would you call it a happy accident oh I don't know I'd call it an accident you know I I know some writers talk about inspiration that comes to them in in in these these very almost mystical terms about you know muses and and inspiration coming to you from strange places I hate comes from us it comes from the subconscious or there right-brained or left-brained or some-some brain but it it is part of me I mean I read things like that just the things that idea was buried somewhere but it came to the surface and I don't know what makes it come to the surface I don't know where you know you get boss-ass often where do your ideas come from and sometimes hero sometimes is a specific incident or an inspiration that generates an idea but 90% of time you don't know it's just there's suddenly there's an idea and sometimes a whole story or a scene and it wasn't there yesterday but today it's there and where did it come from I don't know but I'm certainly glad that they keep coming because you're in trouble if they stopped coming one of these Tom in introducing you a few years back and when you were the featured speaker at an international filler writers thriller fest event Steve berry said the following Tom Doherty is almost single-handedly responsible for moving science fiction and fantasy from the back corner of the bookstore to the New York Times bestseller list without him HBO may never have gotten the opportunity to make Game of Thrones but I have also gotten the feeling that you and this whole this love of this genre was somewhat of an accident as well well actually things were the way back long before I started tour I was sales manager of the pocket-book division of Simon & Schuster Valentine was an independent publisher which we distributed so I was sales manager for yen in Betty Valentine when they launched the very first fantasy line ever presented it's kind of funny the way we presented it we said you know at that time people thought fantasy was just for kids and we said we were going to launch an adult fantasy line I think if we said that today we what we did and we launched it with things like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and they were such a publishing phenomena that they proved to booksellers that fantasy blogged in the front of the store it up Ian and Betty were special people they had started American penguins as a sub company of British penguin they built that through World War two then penguin who had been hurt World War two decided that they really should export books that they needed to have American penguins sell sell their books and the Ballantine's didn't want to do that they wanted to continue to publish for the American public so they put a group together in those days people paperback publishing mass-market and hardcover publishing were two different two different kinds of thing these books which were everywhere from the Walmart to the Kmart you know in those days the Walgreen to the wars in supermarkets drugstores newsstands airports these books were licensed from hardcover publishers they came out a year after the hardcover publisher published it Ian and Betty put a group of hardcover publishers together to form a line which would reprint their books a year after the hardcover publication they got 10% of that for putting it together the line was Bantam which ultimately became the biggest of the best market publishers Ian and Betty built it to the point where they could sell their 10% and start Ballantine Betty had always loved science fiction and fantasy amazing woman she had been editor-in-chief of penguin Bantam and Ballantine before she turned 30 you just don't see anybody that accomplished very often she had a dream to do science fiction and fantasy lines that she did the metallic print and I was lucky enough to be their sales manager and they were generous enough with their time they mentored me they taught me things that I could use when later it became my chance to be a publisher so speaking of fantasy this question is for you George so you've worked as a screenwriter for TV including on such really important fantasy shows as Beauty and the Beast and The Twilight Zone so how would you say that that screenwriting experience effects your writing both for your novels and for your TV work and you know can you tell us about that TV work what what is your role on the TV series and what possibilities do you think television allows or maybe prohibits well now that's it covers a lot of ground that's a big answer you know my television career almost came about by accident although I watched a lot of television a kid going up I began with as a prose writer selling short stories to magazines and selling my first novels you know I was through the early seventies and into the late 70s and the early 80s I was a hot young star in science fiction and fantasy and horror each book doing better than the one before winning Hugo's and nebulas until I published that fourth book there was the one the down is how about the Armageddon rag which got me my biggest advance yet was supposed to be my first bestseller and it was a total commercial failure nobody nobody bought it and I discovered that like almost overnight my career as a publisher as a novelist seemed to be over I couldn't sell my fifth novel I sold a short story collection tough voyage a fix-up for like a tenth of the money that I'd gotten for the Armageddon rag so it was almost like I was having to start all over but oddly enough the same book that closed off my career as a novelist opened my door to Hollywood cuz Armageddon rank was optioned for a feature film by a guy named Phil de Guerre he never got the feature made although he tried for years he wrote several screenplays but phil was also the television show runner and creator who had done simon simon and some other hit shows and CBS came to him and said war we want more hit shows from you feel what do you want to do next is I want to bring back to Twilight Zone and when he did he gave a lot of script assignments to science fiction and fantasy prose writers people without any television or screenwriting experience whatsoever which is very unusual and I was one of the lucky guys because he knew me through our association on our getting read and they liked the first script I wrote and next thing I knew it wild up on staff there I did five scripts for Twilight Zone couple for Max Headroom that when they were produced then I went on to be a staff on reading The Bistro three years of that show and then after that I did five years of development doing pilot so basically I spent a decade in in television and film I think it did when I came back to prose I came back with tools and techniques that I picked up from television that I think helped me as a novelist and an a prose writer you know one of the things that people seem to like a lot nice and fire is the way each chapter leaves you wanting more mm-hmm that's a television technique so that's a technique of the act break that I learned by working in television you know what when you're gonna you know you got a television show going on and you're gonna have to cut to a commercial for you know beer or cars or you know whatever you want them not to change the channel so you you end with an act break and it can be cliffhanger but it's an oversimplification say it's always closed dying is it's a a resolution of something or an introduction of a new element or twist just something really interesting to end the the chapter with or the act with and I applied that that technique mm-hmm to game of Ice and Fire so at the end of your chapter there's there's something there's a twist turn a resolution an introduction of a new complication that will hopefully leave you wanting to find out what happens to Tyrion the next chapter but of course I don't give that to you and then you have to read about aria or dad you have to add then you're you're left at the end of the ru chapter warning of what's going to be next for Aria but now your have to deal with Jon Snow so you know that's a television thing we guys I also think the years in television improved my dialogue if you compare my earlier novels people were much more likely to give long windy speeches and of course that's very discouraged in television or film you know some of the some of the directors and the producers will just look at a page they won't even read the dialogue but if there's a big block that someone is giving a Shakespearean monologue they hate it already they want they want little two line ping-pong hang back and kind of back and forth and that's actually a better way it's a livelier way to to do dialogue and it certainly had some influence on me and in that regard structure - you know William Goldman and his classic book adventures in the screenplay said that he had two Proverbs there that I took to heart one is structures everything and the other one is nobody knows anything those are both true oddly enough great thanks writing for the LA Times in 2011 Ned Vizzini said with Robert Jordan this is with reference to the popularity from Game of Thrones but then the entire series with Robert Jordans Wheel of Time saga a hot commodity publishers entered a fierce bidding war for what was then conceived as the song and I of Ice and Fire trilogy Tom you published Robert Jordan all the way up until his death and now another author has taken over I don't know Brandon Sanderson yep how did you find and how did you come by Robert Jordan and then even if you want to get into how you found it - her books well I guess I would kind of half duty to get it - Robert Jordan the way I found it tor books to go back to the beginning I did all the sales jobs at Simon and Schuster started as local salesman worked my way up district manager regional manager divisional manager national sales manager at that time I distributed balint Ballantine I was the sales manager for Enid Betty as I said launching these great fantasy books went on to be publisher of paperbacks at Grosset & Dunlap where I began publishing fantasy and science fiction which I loved and why a line brought in a really great editor Harriet mcdougal to be my editor in chief at whoa we did well enough so they bought us a Stu play with so we got to be publisher and editor-in-chief of tempo and ace and the other grass of paperbacks that grew well enough so that I could go to venture capital and borrow the money to start tour the way this gets back to what John asked I had three ideas people were telling me in those days you can't start a new mass-market company in other words there are essentially five best market companies that dominated the market mass market sales were much bigger than hardcover sales in those days over a hundred thousand retailers sold mass market but mass market licensed from hardcover and the author sold to the hardcover publisher and the hardcover publisher licensed the mass paperback publisher and split his royalties half he kept half because it was his product which he was licensing the publisher the author got half it seemed to me that it was possible to compete with the big guys if you had some ideas on how you could have economies they didn't have first off do books hard and soft don't licence from anybody give the author the full royalty on the paperback that would make it attractive to the author secondly I'd grown up in sales growing up in sales nobody follows the salesman around to see did he work 9:00 to 5:00 they judge productivity I didn't see any particular reason why an editor had to work in a New York office I wanted to create a company where if they wanted to work there they could if they wanted to work someplace else they could work someplace else too that's how I got Robert Jordan my editorial director at ASA that tempo was a as I said a brilliant editor before she acquired Jordan she acquired Ender's Game for example it's a great classic now in the field which sold over a million copies last year we published it in 85 this is this is great back list anyway Harriet got divorced she was working for me after the divorce she was living in a walk-up in off Atlantic Avenue at Brooklyn shortly thereafter her dad died her mother had already died her dad died and left with this marvelous house in Charleston South Carolina it had been in the family from the mother's side ever since the Revolution had a 500-foot walled garden downtown the father was Admiral of the Atlantic Fleet out of the Naval Base in Charleston so she grew up kind of a southern princess anyway she inherited the house the father had felt a certain noblesse oblige to the old family retainers and left the money for the maiden to cook in the Gardner to work as long as they should wish somehow for some strange reason Harriet thought it might be nicer to bring her five-year-old up in those circumstances than in the walk up in Brooklyn she moves south I couldn't lose it I said Harriet licked you'll be our southern editor you'll work out of Charleston you'll come to New York when you want to to beat with agents but we've got an 800 number we'll get you a computer and a modem that's how we talked in those days you know you said did you copy that way you'll be my southern editor she went to Charleston she had chopped in a bookstore there all our life you know I said she was a little girl she knew the bookstore owner she told the bookstore owner she moved back to Charleston she was going to start up an office but you know an editorial office for a New York publishing company the author the bookstore owner said oh you know you could do me a favor I've got this great customer who was just hurt in an accident on an atomic submarine he was an atomic engineer he's been given a long leave of absence and he says what he wants to do is write a book he's already got a ruff of it which he left would be would you take a look at it and that was Robert Jordan the Harriet looked at it as a favor she loved it it actually wasn't published as Robert Jordan he had pen names for different categories this was the fallowed blood and it was a historical in the American Revolution but he couldn't finish his story in one book it turned out to be a trilogy so then he said what I really always have dreamed to do is write a great epic fantasy and he said would you do that I know it's different but would you do that I said I'd love to he said well okay he said I said but women Jim his name actually was Jim Wrigley Robert Jordan was a pen name I said Jim you're never gonna finish it in one book he said well yeah you're probably right it'll probably be a trilogy like yeah write 14 books later this mention of multiple books I think kind of leads into the next question that we were going to ask so I have a question it's actually for both of you that's about the I'm curious what you both think about the circulation of stories today in our era of multi mediation right and I think that Song of Ice and Fire is really a key example of that so not only is it a book series that obviously has been turned into a television series but there's also you know great many other media texts that circulate around it right dictionaries wiki's maps music videos graphic arts merchandise etc etc so George for you I'm curious about what do you what does that mean to you as an author creating a fictional world where that world now exists in multiple forms and then you know and of those multiple forms I'm particularly curious to know what you think about the fan forms fan rewritings appropriations remix thing so what does it mean for you as an author and Tom for you when George is done the question I have for you is what does it mean for you as a publisher what does it mean for publishing as an industry while we're now you know the text is not the only version that you know amongst all these other circulations and media productions well that's a it's been an interesting experience to say the least I mean when most of my career writing books like the Armageddon rag and fever dream and dying a light before that or all of my short stories did there was no secondary writes there was no subsidiary rights occasionally I would get a movie option you know most of which just paid me some money and they held the rights for a year or two and then you'd never see a movie or something I did occasionally get something filmed my novella night fliers was made into a film at one point I had a story called remembering melody that would became an episode of the hitch-hiker so occasionally something came through but there were no other rights beside that but then with with when Game of Thrones started becoming popular Song of Ice and Fire suddenly I started getting these offers that I had never had before for from various people who wanted to do replica swords or miniature figurines or you know various types of games of role-playing games paper and pen role-playing games and video games and yes the wildering number of things and I remember having through a period where I said well I don't know if I want to take any of these things some of them seem kind of tawdry I you know I am a serious writer you know what F scott Fitzgerald have ever had bubblehead dolls and then I thought about it a little you know from what I know that's Pat Fitzgerald he would have sold bobblehead dolls in a minute and if they fought off their many money for that so he and Zelda could have continued to party so I sign these various contracts and yeah I think they both they've been good and bad things about it you know I I didn't want to be just a guy who signs that signs of contract cashiers to check I wanted to make sure that if I was go to these products that they were good products that they were true to the material so initially I wrote in a lot of approvals to all of these things that they could they could do the game or they could do the whatever it is but I would have to approve everything and that sounds good in theory but of course what had led to me spending a lot of time approving stuff and and not only probably giving notes on stuff and I was probably a little obsessive about it at first and it wound up taking a lot of my time so I I still don't want to let crappy products get out there but I have pulled back a little on the approvals now that I know some of my licensees and who I can trust and who I can trust but the good part is that I discovered that there's an enormous synchronicity here because I've my readership started to build from people coming in from other avenues saying I'd never heard of your series but I played the the role-playing game and I loved the role-playing game I thought I'd better look up the books or you know I collected miniature figures and paint them and I saw your figures that mark sword was doing and I decided I'd better look up the books so I was getting new readers from from all of these things it did cause a bit of a bump but you know with the HBO deal which came along a few years later because you know customarily when you sell the rights to a TV or film company they get all the merchandising rights so HBO was saying well here's the deal and and we get all the merchandising rights I can't give you all the merchandise I've already sold it to these other people and what do you mean we always get all over and I sing rich and you know it wound up for a time that it was look like the whole deal was gonna fall apart because you know even if I wanted to give them the merchandising rights I couldn't because I had pre-existing contracts but thankfully my lawyers and agents were found able to to iron that out but it was a ludicrous nobodies ludicrous negotiation a point where they're saying yes but we'll give you keychains but we keep bobblehead dolls you're going through all of that with the with the agent and well if we always going of course the I still have the old contracts that are that are grandfathered in that are still direct to me but everything that's not under contract went to HBO so not it's just a flood of merchandising coming out because nobody knows how to merchandise like a television network or or a film studio so there there are new products coming out a little comically some I never would have thought like our own beer I mean it's great we have our own beer it's what do you think about the ones that are not officially licensed again like the fan appropriations and fan art fan stories fan rewriting I've long been an opponent of fan fiction I then let me define fan fiction very precisely here because sometimes I get criticized by people say you wrote fan fiction when you were young and now you criticize it how dare you I wrote what we called fan fiction in the 60s in comic fandom but that was simply fiction written by fans right and and published without any money and I certainly did a lot of that but I never borrowed anybody else's character or world I I invented I didn't you know I was a comic fan I didn't write about spider-man or Superman or Batman I created my own heroes you know and wrote about them the White radar and Mantaray and Garrison the mechanical warrior and all that stuff I was writing when I was 14 and 15 but they were my own characters and my own stories what fan fiction has come to mean is writing Star Wars stories are writing Star Trek stories or or writing you know slash fiction which is you know taking taking characters in putting them together in unlikely sexual situations and you know I don't you know what I don't know it doesn't hurt me so if people want to do that fine but don't don't send it to me and expect me to prove it or something no fanart that's that's fine that's a whole whole other thing fan art is great and people do send me links to that all the time some of this you just have to what you want to do for your own amusement is great but you can't start selling it on eBay or merchandising it really you'll get sued if not like me you'll get sued by one of my multiple makers of bobblehead dolls or radiators you'll be moving into one of the areas that they're paying me good money to to be into so and Tom did you have a quick follow-up to that about what it means for the publishing industry now that again text circulate beyond the actual books that you're selling well I basically agree with George that his ideas are his ideas somebody you know his characters are his characters for us it doesn't have much effect because none of it is very powerful some of it creates good publicity and some of it is annoying but frankly we don't pay a whole heck of a lot of attention to it in that same LA Times article George the writer says Martin this is a I wasn't going to go to here but you mentioned an F scott Fitzgerald and you know kind of a bobble head for gatsby martin transports us back to the halls of power and that's why a song of fire and ice often feels less like a Santa a fantasy saga and more like Doris Kearns Goodwin 's team of rivals how much has history influenced your writing in this series but it's unfortunate usually I mean I history was my minor in college I've always loved reading history particularly medieval history but I also read a lot of ancient history and occasionally other periods it's especially cool to read history about countries and times that I know nothing about rather than the you know the same old stories that were taught all through high school and college and such but one of the things I wanted to do when I started writing this series was to well the the the wonder and and imagination of the the very best fantasy and science fiction with some of the grittiness of historical fiction in addition to history I read a lot of historical fiction and for me it fulfills some of the same stuff of fantasies takes us to another place another time a place where more rays were different and yet in historical fiction there's there's a sense of realism that I found very attractive and I'm a huge Tolkien fan certainly he was a giant influence over me but fantasy in in the hands of the imitators who followed Tolkien I think had kind of lost its way they were they were taking a lot of Tolkien's tropes and just repeating them and they didn't have Tolkien was a real scholar and a linguist and an expert in folklore and ancient languages and he brought all of this considerable learning to it that wasn't true to Tolkien imitators they were taking just that Bordas you know castles and knights and-and-and Dark Lords and stuff from token and producing this stuff that seemed to be me to be set in that Disneyland Middle Ages are rather than anything approximating the real Middle Ages so so history you know which was huge for me and as I read a lot of history you know it's that famous quote that if you steal from one person is plagiarism if you steal from many people as research I I stole from many people reading a lot of history and I would say to my wife as I've read some of these histories you can't make this stuff up and listen to what happened here and I read some incredible incident and then you know I I love the serial numbers and change a few things and do a version of that from my books so something like the red wedding as I've said in other interviews was very much inspired by the black dinner of Scotland and the Glencoe massacre both from Scotland Scotland has a lot of incredibly bloody history which is particularly particularly good of course the word of roses was a huge influence over everything the Hundred Years War all of that was was grist for the mill so in addition to historical references do you believe do you also think of Song of Ice and Fire as it's kind of relating to current does it function not only as historical reference in some ways but political allegory right in the way that your work deals with issues you know Warren piece family loyalties or national divisions how do you you know and there is a long history of science fiction and fantasy functioning as sort of historical allegory political allegory do you do you think your work functions in that way well I think some of that is probably there but it's not necessarily there deliberately I think your obviously your influence as a writer by the world you live in and the things you see on the news and and the forces that have shaped you from your childhood to that all of that goes in and it comes out in some ways but I'm not writing conscious allegory pokken was accused of that of course that always made him very angry because he hated allegory but you know when people said well the lord of rings as an allegory for world war ii he would ejected it vehemently but there's no doubt that i think some of that some of that is there some of this is just universal concerns I mean I'm writing about power I'm writing about governance I'm writing about war yes there are differences but the things that are true about the war in Iraq are also true about Caesar's invasion of Gaul and and Alexander's conquests of Persia there are certain universals that that they go all through history and those are inevitably present Tom you've spoken often I've heard you speak about the importance about of having a fascination with telling the tales of quote prehistory and this ties in exactly with where we're good with what this is about can you what does prehistory mean and and a follow-up before even with with that in mind is you've also spoken frequently about the importance of westerns to the form the basic shoot-'em-up Western Curry helping to create the form of the fantasy novels and science fiction could you talk about both the importance of prehistory and the influence of craw of these John one genre and how it's affected these other genres well actually when I started tour I wanted to create a publishing company which I defined this novels of history past president future I thought of it as the broadest kind of science fiction and it seemed to me that archeology and anthropology were clearly sciences and that when you sent novels twenty-five thousand years ago based on the best archeological anthropological knowledge you were doing science fiction we did the classic science fiction set in the future we did hard science fiction which was basically defined as science based science fiction we're doing it now with NASA NASA's gives us ideas and we bring great storytellers and we create what I hope is great hard science science fiction but that was near future science fiction because it was things that we could extrapolate from what we know and we found that Tom Clancy was setting action on a satellite and Cardinal of the Kremlin and selling more than we were selling on the kind of science fiction we were putting in similar periods and we thought well okay maybe some of this we should call techno-thriller because that was what seemed to be fashionable so we called some of this techno-thriller because it fit was the same kind of thing that that michael crichton was doing as a techno thriller for example but techno-thriller will lead you back to thriller the prehistory leads you forward one of the classic areas of science fiction is first contact in science fiction that's normally considered to be first contact between human and alien it could also the editor who feels very comfortable with that it's how civilizations radically different how they meet how they interact that can also be applied to Stone Age North American in industrial European the story of the past leads you forward just as the science fiction lettuce techno thriller led us to thriller which took us back to World War two the prehistory led us into first contact let us into historical x' let us up to world war ii where they've urged much of it though was still science fiction because this is the kind of fiction we were trying to publish so my next question again to george's kind of continues on the issue of the political implications so for all the enormous interest and lauding of your work certainly deservedly Spokeo there have also been some critiques i'm sure you know of the series by which i mean both the book series on the TV series political and social implications now in many ways we could say that the series really kind of undermine traditional notions of power that they really in some ways very much play with you know as we've talked about about phallic constructions of power kind of subverting it but at the same time you know there has been some critique of the works in terms of issues of gender and sexuality and race so for example with the TV series that even led to the coinage of a new term sex position right which people talk about it you kind of laugh about the way that sometimes they'll be these scenes with with sexual activity or nudity to kind of prevent the information of narrative kind of narrative information from seeming boring that you have the sex my god so some people say okay so women and sexual minorities are therefore just kind of titillation purposes and not much else and there have also been some critique of some of the racial tropes for instance using the trope of the kind of white savior of dark people like in the case of Daenerys Targaryen so I'm curious do you think that these critiques are justified how do you respond to those critiques well you that question covers a lot of territory let me try to separate that into the component parts here first of all you have to separate the books from the television I know they're there they're two different things and sometimes it's very very very clear as in the case of this white Savior business with the the scene with Daenerys where she is hailed by the slaves that she's just read in the city of yokai that scene is drawn largely from the books but in them in the books I think I make it very clear that the slavery of slavers Bay of Yong Chi and hasta poor and marine is not racially based it's not American slavery which was strictly race-based it's modeled much more on the the slavery of the ancient Near East of the Romans and the Greeks where slaves could be of any race you know it could just be the guys who've lost in last war you know the Greeks enslaved each other you know if Thebes defeated Athens in a war a bunch of Athenians would suddenly be slaves and thieves and vice versa the Romans conquered people of various colors in Africa and very different covers and colors in Germany and goal and made slaves of them all and that's certainly what I depict in the books and I think that's what is meant to be depicted in the TV show - but their practicalities would running a TV show those those scenes were filmed in Morocco and the people that you see are extras who are paid you know thirty dollars a day or something like that - to perform just to be in the background when you film that the practicalities are you put out a call for extras and people show up and then you sign up as many as you need when you do that in Morocco Moroccan show up so I don't know what the I mean obviously there's an implication there that people took of it perhaps people who had not read the books that one of the people that she freed were brown or black and that's certainly not the was not intended to be the case but on the other hand flying in people from from Ireland to in order to yeah people this scene in Morocco just to stand in the crowd would have been very very cost prohibitive these are the kind of practicalities of television production that's that some critics never taken to advantage I mean if you look at the Dothrak I for example we filmed these Dothraki scenes with Daenerys in a number of different places and you know like some of the early scenes our main location is Belfast in Northern Ireland and we film in areas around Belfast now Danny in particular has film scenes in Morocco in Malta she's filming some in Spain right now we move around what some of the early death rocaille scenes when she's first with Khal Drogo or actually filmed in in the fields outside Belfast in Northern Ireland in forests and grasslands if you look at those closely there's a lot of kind of pasty white enough right right because those are the guys who showed up when we put a casting poem yeah hey do you have long hair can you ride a horse and you know you hire who you show up and I mean that's senior you know with with Daenerys - I mean ties to the gender issues I know what you're saying about the differences between the TV show in the book that it's very different let's say the issues of sexual violence that are in the TV program are not like the scene you know that it is not a rape of Danny and in your book and I know that so I understand exactly what you're saying about that that between the difference between the television and but as you know but you're also an executive producer of the TV series do you have can you kind of negotiate those things with them or you know how does that work to say I don't like the way your you're translating this you know I'm involved in a television show but it's it's really run by David Benioff and you know and I don't consult every day I'm not I'm not in Belfast I'm you know in Santa Fe trying to half a world away trying to finish my books so I do consult with them they we talk regularly they sometimes ask my opinions and sometimes they don't but I don't think in them in that particular case I would have done anything different I mean they frankly I don't even think I realized it was a problem there until people started pointing out there was a problem maybe that's my blindness or the blindness of David and Dan but it was just you know the practicalities if you're going to do that see I mean how do you how do you get that where do you get the mixed racial things when you're trying to hire a thousand extras for a scene and you're doing it in Morocco I don't know you know do you CGI to to change their complexion or do you know Jews say we have enough brown people sorry we're not hiring anymore you brown people you know only white people should I don't know I don't know how you how you do that but I don't know maybe there is a better way and we should have thought about it more but I don't know that now let me go to another part of that question which is the sex position question that was a that was a very cool coinage which was coined by I think it was miles not yes miles not yeah referring to it but one particular scene yeah and I think was probably justified for that particular scene Littlefinger is giving a long speech in the brothel and meanwhile there's there's a couple girls getting it onto the background and it was parodied on Saturday Night Live and all that but I do think that like many of these tropes that oh these coordinators come forward it's it's been met vastly misused people don't seem to actually understand the scene have started applying it to any scene that has sex I don't think sexuality is sex position you know sex position was that one particular thing where they're trying to put something I guess visually interesting on behind on the scene whether while someone was delivering uh you know a long nugget of backstory George let me let me come at this from a different way because there's another side to your characters another side to what you're doing as you illuminate in your rolling stone interview from a firm maybe about a year ago you deride the fact that fantasy is mostly inundated with evil ugly Dark Lords who go to battle with dashing brave heroes and you've kind of turned that paradigm upside down I'm gonna have a follow-up to Tom on this in a second your books feature a dwarf as a major character if not the sole the most reasonable voice a disabled boy many of the characters a prostitute plays several seem to be wise and heroic you have a character who commits in the first book and the first season of the show an irredeemable act who is now in the club since he's lost a a limb is becoming almost I I hesitate to say heroic and yet that's what it is you seem to have changed the nature of heroism as it has been traditionally defined in fantasy and science fiction is that something you set out to do consciously or digit or did it evolve the characters like Tyrion bran and Jaime Lannister did they just evolve organically you know I think it's a little bit of both I've always been attracted to great characters I think they're more interesting than than heroes you know who were just going around being heroic all the time is that why bike taking Jamie's hand away he becomes a more sympathetic character and seeks redemption instead of continuing on the path he was on before well he certainly has to read to find himself and in that comes a lot of personal anguish and personal growth and personal struggle all of which is you know great material for uh for drama you know I grew up as a comic book fan as I mentioned that was my first stuff was publishing comic fanzines and a huge influence on me when I was like 10 11 12 years old was was Stan Lee and the Marvel comics and that was one of the things he did you know I'd been reading DC Comics for years when Marvel started and did he see stories were all completely circular you know Batman was swinging around Gotham City and you know here comes the Riddler or the Joker and he defeats the Riddler and Joker and they go in but they're never any surprises the story ends right where begins so next week he can deal with poison ivy or whatever and you always know who to hear us well you always know who the villains were and Stan Lee three through let out yes sir and he you know the Fantastic Four what a revelation that was in 1961 you know one uh one of the guys on the team was a monster and he didn't like being a monster and he was angry at the other people on a team they were fighting within each other Justice League never fought within each other and I discovered really the powers of conflict and the powers of great characters and they continued to I mean I love lorded reins and I think Boromir is my favorite character he's the one who who succumbs you know he's a hero but he's also fatally flawed and you know he fails at the last moment and and you know you're rooting for him but then and Peter Jackson's a great job in the movie was showing his temptation you really really like Boromir but you know then he turns against Frodo corrupted by the ring but then he does so heroically full of arrows Sean Bean dying one of his many deaths so I loved to write about characters like that and intellectually I always I also I also find the question of redemption fascinating maybe it's you know I'm not religious now but I was raised a Catholic so maybe it's maybe it's a questions that I that come to me from my whole Catholic upbringing and the things I learned from my sister Mary elephant or something in Tara to them I mean you know that the whole question of forgiveness for sin you know that the Catholic Church teaches you go to confession and you were forgiven for your sins even terrible sins but certainly our society doesn't necessarily doesn't necessarily deal with that we we don't forgive people even I don't forgive people I recognize you know I'm a great character myself here I'm you know as some of you know follow my blog I'm a I'm a football fan I'm a fan of the Giants and the Jets but it bothers me to Michael Vick is on mine is on my Jets team and I know he's paid his debt to society and all of I can't just bring myself to root for this guy yeah so you know and and then I'm people say well what about your belief and we're done well yeah I know but it's still it's hard it's hard you know Tom the characters I mentioned who are actually survivors and they're in every book that's what these three characters of Jamie Lannister you know Tyrion Lannister and bran that's what they have in common talk about in publishing why a series like Wheel of Time or Song of Ice and Fire is the direction authors often going well I think that quest and heroic quest is a rough background but that people get involved with the characters when interesting characters are created people want more of them they want to spend more time with them because they are interesting and as they spend more time with them you know you'd rather spend time with your friends than with strangers as you spend more time with people and become more involved in their thinking you become yourself involved with where the story goes and you want to spend more time there which means you want to read the next book which is of course what publishers and authors would like that we would add value that we would engage you that we would bring you forward to the things that we were going to do next so the last question sort of for both of you so over this conversation you know we've ranged over a lot of topics about the kind of multi mediations of going on in today's world about the way in which the the books are relate to certain historical issues political issues you were talking about spiritual issues so in some ways the way they open up new ways of thinking about things both the books on the TV program so I'm curious to hear from both of you about what do you think in what ways are they kind of maintaining older models in what ways in today's world you think new ideas are being produced through your work and for you Tom in what ways is a kind of new things happening and publishing that then allow people to think about even literature differently today well I mean we're certainly living in interesting times for for storytellers you know in terms of film and television I think this is the true golden age of television even much more so than the early 50s which is often called the golden age of television it has never been so many great television shows on you know and thanks to cable and a proliferation of channels it changed radically from even when I was most active in television in the 80s and 90s but even as its flowering it may be in the process of dying we don't know what effect Netflix and you know cable delivery systems Amazon is getting into it you Lou is getting into it everybody's making dramas of some sort and do you even call them television if they're not broadcast or cablecast if they're only available through purchase on computer things we have web series who the hell knows where it's going to going to end up but to my mind all of these things are about story you know dangerous women the anthology that where we're giving away here is Gardner don't Swan I did that that's one of my cross genre anthologies I've always been kind of an opponent of strict genre classifications that devil the industry now may because when I was growing up in New Jersey I didn't have a book store I had a spinner rack at the local candy store world the books were jumbled up together so you know the science fiction books were next to the mystery books were next to the collections of Shakespeare well next to the non-fiction books about how to win friends and influence people everything was there were nurse novels and gothics it was all mixed up together and mostly what science fiction fantasy but sometimes I buy one of those other things I read widely and I think that's the way we should do it now we've got bookstores and publishing is all sliced up into these genre things you know here's the science fiction sighs some people never leave the science fiction or fantasy section and dangerous women has science fiction fantasy and precise mystery stories and mainstream stories and historical fiction all about dangerous women so very broad theme and all that now one of the shake people up and get them out of their categories and one of my mantris has always been what William Faulkner said when he was given the Nobel Prize you know the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself and I believe that and I think that that transcends genre it's stories about the human heart and conflict itself doesn't matter if it's a mainstream literary fiction which I consider itself a genre or some mystery or it's a science fiction or fantasy whether it has spaceships in a dragon's interesting good stories are about the human heart in conflict with itself I think that's also true when we're talking about delivery systems I don't care if it's a on cable if it's on Netflix of this a movie a television trove it's a radio play it's a live stage play all of this can be a vehicle for telling stories and if we tell a powerful story with real characters that affects people makes them laugh and makes them cry and that they remember you know ten years after they read it that's that's what I want to do and I think the delivery systems have changed before as we were talking about at dinner vaudeville died it was once the thriving part of the American scene radio drama died but new things came forward - replacement and you know will will television die as we know it I don't I don't know maybe the network's will die I think they're a little looking a little sickly to tell you the truth they saw the biggest audiences but they're not doing cutting-edge work anymore cable and now Netflix are doing the shows that people are talking about people were excited about and that may be where the creative heart ends but it all remains to be seen and you know of course it is closer to the to the business side of all of this as I do and all the things are of course our businesses and they're all driven by the fact that they have to make a profit at some level so when they stop making a profit like vaudeville then they go away so what's going to survive I hope folks survive because I love books yeah that will always be despite my television film experience yeah and even new delivery systems like kindled I love my physical books so do you want to add to that about the state of publishing yeah well where you see that yeah growing and then we'll end with that and go to question I agree with George I mean first comes the story powerful characters that involve me that draw you in that make you want to spend time with them the reason for the labeling and you know I as I said before I was trying to find science fiction pretty broadly what I said I was publishing science fiction from the future to the prehistory still labeling helps people to find what they want there are an awful lot of trees in the forest one of the problems with the Internet is that there is just too much out there that is not good there's a lot that's good too but it's hard to find the internet isn't easy to browse it's a wonderful wonderful thing if you know what you want you can get it no bookstore could carry all the back lists of a publisher but you could get it on the internet and that's great but the problem is that you got to know what you want if you don't know what you want you're not going to have a very happy time now how do you begin to know what you want how do you find the first George Barton this is what a publisher tries to do he tries to you know the labels I understand George's objection to the labels but the labels are devices to kind of point somebody in the right direction and if we label truly and package truly our covers ought to be representative of what's in the book they're small that small ants they're not they're not really illuminations of the text but they ought to be honest dance which show you this is what we think this book is about if you're looking for it here it is now our problem today George was saying when he was young what do you where he found his book was on this wire spinarak this was a wonderful device to sample the public there were over a hundred thousand retailers with wire spinner racks in ninety in the 1950s when I got into publishing over a hundred thousand there weren't when he and ballantine got into publishing he sent said there weren't five hundred he said this to me I never tried to verify it but he said there weren't five hundred book stores in the continent in the entire North American continent that he could regularly sell so what we were doing is we were getting through these mass-market books we're getting a sample where a person could taste it could decide what they liked at a price that most people could afford we would look at surveys Gallup Nielsen which for years said this is how you got people into bookstores when they were satisfied often enough in an impulse situation waiting for a prescription in a drugstore buying from a revolving rack going down a supermarket aisle to buy a pound of coffee and buying from Iraq and an 8-foot section in the supermarket when you satisfied him in those in those conditions then they knew that what they wanted and they began to go to places where they could get what they wanted but the sampling was very important now what what our problem is today is that we have lost a substantial part of those hundred thousand retailers as we move into the internet which is a wonderful thing in and of itself and the e-book is under phul thing we have given people I guess what we would call it is is instant gratification they don't have to wait for a cheaper addition most of my life and publishing you had to wait a year to get the free print of the twenty five dollar hardcover you waited a year to get the inexpensive paperback if you buy a computer today you can buy it next year cheaper and probably better if you buy a fall fashion it'll be on sale on tables in the spring this is how most business works most merchandising works but with ebooks you get instant low price and instant gratification nobody has to wait any longer so what this does is it gets books that people want to them very very quickly but it undermines the distribution system it undermines when Amazon can run it saying go to your local book store look at the book and then check on your phone and see will beat their prices they're not paying for that display and you know we've lost the Waltons the Daltons all the mall stores the crowns the laureates all these impulse opportunities along with these wire racks which are so seldom there anymore and it means we have a hard time introducing new authors we have a much easier time selling established authors because people know they want them but the new author the very talented youngster was coming into the market with a great story it's so hard to get him to the audience that would appreciate him and so these are our challenges yes we've got a wonderful plus here but we've got a minus over there that is kind of balancing it so where are we as a business about where we were but I worry going into the future if we can't establish young authors where is the future we've got to be able to introduce people to the best that is coming in into into books what a perfect way to finish yeah so he was you were just speaking about you know people don't like to wait I know a lot of you been waiting with your own questions so first of all please help me thank [Applause] and now now we're gonna move into hearing your question so let me just give you some parameters first of all I know there's some questions that are on your mind that I'm gonna answer for you very quickly so you don't have to bother George with them his favorite character is Tyrion the next book is going to come out when the next book comes out and the characters will continue as they as he sees fit for them to continue so again please don't pressure him about that so the way we're going to handle the questions is there are microphones on either side if people could please line up behind the microphones what we were sort of actually I think I should talk about the next book I should tell you that I actually have three books coming out this month so none of them are the winds of winter but we do have the ice dragon which my children children's book which has an older book but it's just been reissued by tor and hardcover beautiful new edition with artwork by louis royale and that came out a couple days ago and the dangerous women paperback the first volume because it's a really big book in hardcover that comes out when that comes out in a few days right actually that is shipping now it may bring the hours okay and then on October 28th the world of Ice and Fire comes out a giant heavily illustrated coffee table book from Bantam spectra hardcover with all of the background and information about Westeros order on every page gorgeous art and tons of history about and yeah you can read the Armageddon break so you can be one of the twelve so now that's in print now all my old books have come back and French so you can get them but they're not coming at this month so what we wanted to do Detroit because I know a lot of people have questions so first of all try to keep your questions relatively brief what we wanted to do was hear a question hear questions from both sides in other words you asked and you asked so they hear both Stark's because ministers both questions first because sometimes questions overlap and then yeah I said so Lannister it's alright ok have you are yeah have you read anything that made you think differently about fantasy or science fiction either or both okay and your question and my question is you have such a brilliantly realized world but you've also called yourself more of a gardener as a writer so I guess my question is how much of Westeros was planned as a setting prior to even beginning the first draft almost not I mean when that first chapter came to me I I didn't know what I had I knew it didn't fit them to science fiction novel I was presently writing so I knew it wasn't some fantasy but I didn't have a name for it and I didn't know anything but I continued to write the first few chapters at some point I stopped them through drew a map that's kind of I knew when I was doomed when I drew the first map but I am a gardener rather than an architect and and the world has grown together with with the story there are times I almost wish some of you have probably read Gene Wolfe the absolutely brilliant science fiction and fantasy writer from from Chicago author of the many books book in the New Sun and was one of his best and as sort as a trilogy ended up in four books I was in a writers group with Gene when he was writing that and gene had a full-time job as an editor for a technical magazine and he wrote all four of those books in first draft before he submitted any of the publisher and then having finished all four books he went back and revised the first one you know put in some foreshadowing of things that had happened in the fourth book that he didn't know when he was writing the first book eliminating loose ends that led nowhere you know just making them and that's really the way to write a long series but you know and and as part of me that you know if I had if I had been a billionaire with you trust fund I might have done that but then none of you would have read any of the books because I I'd still be working in book five and Game of Thrones wouldn't be released yet because I'd be holding it to go back and when I finished all seven so you know but it grows it for me it grows the world grows long with the stuff I did have to when putting together this world book the world of Ice and Fire really focus in and I invented a lot of new material for that a lot of background that the the fans and readers had sent me emails and letters about you guys are insatiable I mean it's it's like you know I do a family tree with like eight generations and then like a week later I get was the father before that first generation I mean if I supposed to go back to the Westeros Adam and Eve I don't know I guess so but yeah yeah have you read anything both of you that made you think differently about fantasy I've read a lot of great fantasy I think this is a golden age for for fantasy I mean we have a lot of wonderful new fantasy as Daniel Abraham with the dagger and the coin Patrick Rothfuss Scott Lynch Joe Abercrombie these are all writers that I really really really like and and admire so they're doing some amazing stuff Tommy from your from tour any great new fantasy writers well I think Brandon Sanderson we asked him to finish after Robert Jordan died we asked him to finish the Wheel of Time he worked from Jordans Notes extensive notes he worked with Jordan's wife who was Jordans editor but he finished it brilliantly he's got his own Stormlight archives which he is now developing and the first book in that series that he did after finishing you the Jordan was the number one New York Times bestseller and we we think he's got an amazing future right one of the one of the interesting things that have in both fantasy and science fiction right now is where we're seeing a lot of new writers coming into the field who are from a different cultural and ethnic background you know people who are Asian or African American or just African or or you know from many different cultures and they're drawing on you know it's often been pointed that a lot of epic fantasy has its roots like Tolkien and in the European Middle Ages or the European Dark Ages and that's certainly been true of the overwhelming amount of material but I think that's starting to break down and where we're getting some interesting books by some interesting writers look at the people of being nominated for the Campbell Award the last few years a much broader so we're getting more diversity into the field now whether that is going to succeed or not some of this up to writers and how good those books are is also up to you you know are you going to support these writers are you going to buy their books and review their books and and create a blurb about their books and if so we're gonna have an explosion I think of fantasy that's much more much more diverse and and maybe you won't seem quite so familiar I mean I I base my work on the history that I knew the history that I was taught and I'd read numerous abouts like war to roses and all that I don't know a huge amount about Asian history of someone coming in drawing from a Japanese perspective or an Indian perspective would produce something very different and I look forward to reading books like that and I think we're gonna we're gonna get a lot more of that moving forward all right let's hear the next set of questions for the next people hi after having worked on the TV series do you find that when you're writing you you have images from the show but the characters look like where the places look like or is it entirely separate in your mind that's a great question and your question would be my question was you'd been did you really like your great character as I was wondering if it's easy for you as an author to kind of kill off or let go of their cure good or pure evil are they somehow a little bit easier to maybe write and easier to alright great those are kind of good I I do get attached my characters and sometimes it is hard to kill them off I've said before that the red wedding was the hardest thing I ever wrote I finished an entire book and I had to skip over that chapter I couldn't write that chapter until the rest of the book was finished Wow okay now I get to go back and finally write that chapter and I'd made myself right after it was painful these characters assume a sort of reality to me and on the same token there know that TV show does not affect my images the characters I recognize that it does so for you for the readers and the viewers you probably see when you read the books you see Peter Dinklage when you read Cleary and you see Maisie Williams when you read Aria and they're both sensational at their parts I so many of our cast but you got to remember I've been living with these characters since 1991 and we had the first meeting about the TV show in 2007 so they would do sixteen years that I was living and writing about this characters in that world before the TV show was even a twinkle in the eye of HBO so that's two deeply rooted to replace it for me all right all right next up so one of the most great and terrible things about A Song of Ice and Fire is its unpredictability so how has the expanded reader base affected your ability to keep up that sense of excitement or sort of the ability to predict or not predict things that are going to happen in the series and for George I know you don't directly are involved with the goings on with the show right now but I just wanted to get your opinion on exactly how the show has deviated from your own writings and how well you think that should continue or not continue I always think it Syrians knows Syrians knows is a good example I mean yeah they didn't cut off his nose I write that you know yes and they cut off his nose and then I can make references in the subsequent books to him having ever knows or having a big scar and how it itches and he scratches it that's relatively easy for me to do actually cutting off Peter Dinklage's nose was prohibited by the Actors Guild so we were stuck with well if we wanted to do that we would have to essentially put a piece of green screen a little green kind of thing on the end of his nose that he would have to wear in all of his scenes and then we could CGI every moment he appeared you know the the nose scar and I was just way too expensive I mean it's the practicalities of of doing it again you know a lot of the changes that occur between a movie or television show or book are dictated by practical considerations like that questions of budget and shooting time and what can be done and what what can't be done and I'm already forgetting the other question I'm sorry my mind is a sieve here oh the extended reader base has affected your ability to write things that are unpredictable yeah that's a good question I'm not sure that's the expanded reader base that has a effective thing so much as the Internet but basically I have to I have to divorce myself from the internet I mean I know it's out there and I know people have theories and sometimes at venues like this people come up and tell me their theories don't do that but the truth is when you're when you're when you're writing a book you know that has any kind of surprises or mysteries you know you lay in certain clues that let us say the butler did it and it's a long series you you lay in the clues and the first one and you have more clues and maybe a few red herrings and subsequent ones and most readers will not miss that they will they will not figure out who did it they will not even be cognizant there's a mystery or they will put together the clues wrong but there will always be some and this has always been true there will always be some who put the clues together and figure out that the butler did it what's changed in the eyes of the internet is now that smart ass feels that they can go on the internet and say oh here are the seven clues that I found and cede the butler did it so if you're a writer and you're aware of that then you have what do you do now your surprise is ruined because suddenly this person has put it out and now thousands of people have read it and they're will say oh yeah you're right I didn't see that but yeah the butler do it so you can change the subsequent books and the butler didn't do it now now the the chambermaid did it but but then all your clues that you put in so carefully in the first and second book lead to nowhere in there they're they're contradictions so I don't do that I you know I'm sorry what the butler is still going to do it at the end and and some people will have figured that out I think and other people who didn't figure it out will know it because they read it on the internet and one of these theories swapping things but and there's no help for that there's a structure to the things that you have to be true to I consoled myself in the fact that I do have millions of readers and as as big and noisy as the internet seems it's still relatively small in the cosmic scheme of things so there will be at the end there will still be many many thousands of people who will be shocked to find out that the boat all right next set this one is also for George whenever you say it is for Tom he's getting off easy tom photos whenever you if you do hit bumps in the road or roadblocks with character plots or like traits or whatever how much of that do you draw from your personal life in order to create a more in-depth character or scene or a relationship a Song of Ice and Fire is very very long well it's a fairly long running series of very long novels and people who read these who have been reading these novels since the beginning have developed a kind of a feel I feel they must have developed a series of feeling of trust that you're going to be leading them to somewhere that ultimately has very good payoff do you feel that with the immense number of people you kill per book that you could violate that trust so those go together you know in terms of the person your personal experiences and then also the personal feelings of the readers so well I hope I don't violate that trust but you know i I've kind of become accustomed to the fact that some people probably will think I have but time we reached the end you know it's it's a it's a phenomenon of a low of a warring series like this when you know people start noticing it with the first book or the second book or a third book and then then they love those books and the fourth books not out yet and they start anticipating the fourth book and they this Platonic ideal of what that fourth book is gonna be develops in their head and then they get the actual fourth book and many people were happy with it but then there's always gonna be a percentage readers are not happy with it because it didn't go to way they thought it was gonna go where it wasn't as as whatever it was they thought it was so you inevitably come come on that with a series but I certainly want to try to stick the ending as as best I can it's not easy I mean I'm not gonna name names here but well we're dinner we were discussing some other writers and and you know some very very good writers have a real problem with endings and things can be can be tough for you especially for big sprawling things you pull out a lot of stuff that's for the question about yes you did go on your personal experience to make characters come alive to just some extent that's that's where the inner life comes from that was that's where the human heart in conflict herself comes from I was very threatened as a kid when I knew I wanted to be writer by the stuff you always read in like how to write books and things like only write about what you know because I wanted to write science fiction of fantasy and I I didn't really know about being a prince or an astronaut or you know I was this kid from New Jersey and we we were poor we didn't run a car I my world was five blocks long and I've seen oh god do I have to write about a guy who lives in Bayonne and the projects and walks to school every day five blocks long but what I discovered is that what you know it's not the mundane details of you know where you live and and what it is but it's it's what you know is about life about love but about heroism and cowardice and and these issues what it's like to be human and and you have to you have to draw on yourself to do that yeah you draw on other things too you read you read you know characters from history and you read people in the news and you have friends and relatives and gudge does you want to school with and grows you want to school with and you can base characters and all of them to some extent at least externally but you only know those people unless you're a telepath and you don't look like a telepath to me you don't really know what's going beyond the behind these these masks the only one you really know is yourself and you know I think to be a significant writer there's a you have to be willing to kind of expose yourself and and dig dig deep and you know I guess Harlan I was never say bleed on the paper or something like that and that's a lesson I learned early on this that stood me in good stead I read a lot about a lot of characters and none of them are kids from Bayonne so obviously I'm not writing about what I know in that sense I I've never been an exiled princess I've never been a eight-year-old girl I've never been a dwarf but there's a lot of me and all those characters I mean it's well you know I think what would what would it be like if I was in a yo girl in our your situation what would be like if I was if I was Daenerys Targaryen or Tyrion Lannister how would it feel and I do put a lot of myself into that thank you okay so next Sarah can I just say too if anybody has a question for Tom come to the front of the line yes before I ask my question mr. Martin I really like to thank you for writing the books they've had a huge impact on my life um so thank you my question is how do you think that the success of the entire Song of Ice and Fire universe has influenced the way that you're writing the future books okay hi I have two questions the first one's really quick first what are your favorite house words and then also I assume you quickly developed a final outcome for this story after originally creating it but at some points you also made changes like the inclusion of like a five-year gap so I was wondering if there were any other major deviations or character choices that you made and later thought better of my favorite house words are definitely winter is coming that's the 1i I write you know repeatedly when I'm when I used to do inscriptions on sign books I haven't actually gotten to the end yet so I don't know if there are gonna be other major changes it's it's possible but I don't I think the broad outlines are gonna remain the same you know I know where some of the major characters are going how they're going to end up how it's going to resolve but there are the devil is in the details and there's a lot of stuff that occurs when you're actually writing the books I don't know you dealt with some of this um you and Harriet with with Jordan I'm sure Jim always said that he knew the last scene when he when he started so did did he entrust that to Harriet and did Brandon write the last scene that Jim had originally envisioned it yeah and that was like 20 years later right 20 years later but of course then he was thinking it was going to be a trilogy yeah I'm sorry I'm worried forgetting the first play I keep forgetting these two questions at a time I I'm old and people so how do you think the success of the entire universe has influenced the way that you write the future novels I don't think it's influenced the way I read the future novels but it's it's certainly been a distraction I probably would have written a novels faster if I wasn't like always approving things or going on tours or you know doing humming to brown doing other coming to brown yeah to do that I mean this just it's just a lot of other things and you know some of it is is good stuff and stuff I enjoy enjoy doing I know there's a subset of my fans so but they could just chained me to the typewriter and if no one was giving me awards or in offering me free trips to to Dubai and and South Africa and you know maybe I would do that but when I actually settle down and write you know between these trips here and I am trying to guess where I'm trying to cut down on all of this but when I'm actually there writing it it's like time vanishes and I'm back I'm back once again in in Westeros and the real world disappears and days and weeks go by and I don't do anything else except live and breathe those characters and it's that's still pretty much the same process everything vanishes including the show as much as I love to show it's it's different from the books and so it's the books and the characters as I interpreted them that take over my life so now many of you excuse me have questions and I hope that you'll come to the reception at sales Hall next door George and Tom will be joining us for the reception but they will not be signing books please join me in thanking our guests and our interview [Applause] you

Channel: Brown University Library

Views: 213,006

Rating: 4.5856776 out of 5

Keywords: George R. R. Martin (Author), GRRM, Brown University (College/University), Science Fiction (TV Genre), Fantasy (TV Genre), Publishing (Industry), Tor Books (Publisher), Library (Industry), Harris Collection, #HarrisAward, Tom Doherty, Literature (Media Genre), College (TV Genre), Television (Invention), Game Of Thrones (Award-Winning Work)

Id: TB5AU_bCZJg

Length: 94min 26sec (5666 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 30 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/FlatNote]

I'm disappointed that GRRM and the moderators missed the point of that guy's question about killing specifically the more black and white characters. That could've been an interesting answer, but instead we got George's usual response about killing characters in general. Oh well.

Good panel though!

[u/paperfisherman]

Heh. At 16:10 GRRM calls it the "Game of Ice and Fire".

[u/feldtpeldt]

I'm halfway through, but I liked George responding directly to criticisms about race and gender. He seemed uncomfortable for a moment, especially with all the microphone noise, but, regardless of the practicalities of television extras (and unmentioned HBO female nudity quotas), it's nice to see him admit the show isn't entirely puppies and sunshine as an adaptation.

It makes me happy he knows Myles McNutt's name.

[u/ahappyhotdog]

I don't have anything to add to the discussion but those chairs look amazing.